2-in-1 review of two new Two-Face-related Elseworlds: "Batman: Earth One" and "Ame-Comi Duela Dent!"
Over the past month, there have been two DC projects which have dealt with an alternate-reality Gotham, both of which feature their versions of Two-Face... more or less. And yeah, okay, they're not official "Elseworlds" because DC doesn't call their alt-u books those anymore, but screw you, DC, they'll always be Elseworlds to me!
The first is Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's Batman: Earth One, which I'd recently speculated might feature a Harvey Dent cameo at least. I still haven't read the book myself, but thanks to the help of martin_l_gore, I've at least gotten the low-down on the basic details, especially when it comes to the Harveys and the Dents. Yes, that was indeed a pair of plurals, as in addition to a surprising new take on Harvey Bullock, there are two Dents in B:EO.
Did I mention ***SPOILERS*** already?
Okay, good.
So as you may recall from my previous Batman: Earth One post, there was a preview page showing angst-ridden young Bruce talking with this universe's grizzled, ex-military, Sam Elliot style Alfred Pennyworth, and the last line on the page seemed to give one great big hint as to the speaker's identity:
So yeah, from that line, we're naturally meant to assume that it's Harvey speaking to Bruce. I mean, sure, it's a pretty cliched line right out of the Jeph Loeb school of writing Harvey Dent, but I wouldn't have put it past Johns to go there himself. Well, to Johns' credit, it was a purposeful misdirection, since the person speaking that line isn't Harvey at all. But she is a Dent:
Is anyone else getting a serious Rachel Dawes vibe off of this character? Not surprising, since Christopher Nolan and David Goyer were originally thinking of using of using Harvey in Batman Begins, but they ended up modifying his role into Rachel's. I don't know if Johns knew that when he wrote this scene and created this character, but if so, then what he's doing here is an interesting twist/mix of both ideas:
... Cute.
To quote Darth Vader, "... SIS-terrrr. So you have a twin sister." You don't find out that they're twins until later, but I couldn't resist busting out that line. But let's put that aside for the moment. Right now, I'm more distracted by the fact that he's being depicted as a complete asshole, kind of akin to Draco Malfoy by way of Flash Thompson who also kind of looks like Guy Gardner when he's getting Bat-punched. As you might imagine, I'm not crazy (hurr) about these pages.
From what I can see, the purposes served by this scene are to convey some history about Bruce's family (his mother's side are Arkhams here rather than Kanes, which kind of strikes me as needless consolidation of the mythos), coupled with the introduction of Harvey's original-character sister and a cute "ha-ha, look, it's the guy who's going to become Two-Face looking like Two-Face when he got punched for being a little shit!" moment. It's hardly the most flattering take on the character, and not exactly an encouraging indication of what he'll be like as an adult.
Unfortunately, we'll have to wait for the next volume to see how that plays out, but Johns gives us one more hint at the end, after the "ousting" of the corrupt Mayor Oswald Cobblepot (details withheld for the sake of those who still want to read this thing):
So, who wants to bet that she's going to get killed and it'll cause Harvey to go insane? Maybe Johns will be more creative than that and instead do it the other way around and make her Two-Face! I'd love to see that, especially since I'm not looking forward to seeing what kind of dickhole Harvey's grown into. Besides, it wouldn't be the first time that Gary Frank has drawn a female Two-Face:
Heck, she even has the scarring on the same wrong side as Harvey's punched-face! Maybe it's a theme or something. Yeah, I didn't think so, either.
As for Batman: Earth One as a whole, everything I've seen about the book makes it looks like a perfectly fine B-grade story that is perfectly serviceable even though it doesn't acquit its existence as being yet another goddamn Batman origin. By far, the most interesting aspect appears to be the subplot of Jim Gordon, who is a compromised/corrupt cop here, and a very different take on Harvey Bullock, much of whose SPOILER-filled storyline was posted here by martin_l_gore. Thanks again, Martin! Because of these scans, I will definitely be picking up a copy of this at some point! When I saw the Bullock stuff, my first thought was "DO NOT WANT," but I think Johns made it work by the end. We'll see where his story goes in volume two.
The other big appearance is only an extremely technical and distant connection to any Harvey we know, but I think you'll understand why she merits at least a mention:
So DC's been doing weekly digital comics based on the Ame-Comi line of figurines, which reimagined female heroes and villains with anime-style designs. One of the released figures was Duela Dent, who--as you can see--was a steampunk take on a female Joker with a Heath Ledger Glasgow smile. Unsurprisingly, a small fandom started to emerge around her via fan art and cosplay, and it only seems to be catching on more with each passing convention season.
Now, the Ame-Comi version of Duela has gotten her own origin in the pages of Ame-Comi Girls, written by the Jonah Hex team of Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, and drawn by Courtney Crumrin creator Ted Naifeh, so naturally, I was curious to see what they would do with the character's murky family lineage. Would she be Two-Face's daughter? The Joker's? The Jokester and Three-Face's ala Countdown, god help us?
The story begins with a flashback to little Duela growing up in her old dilapidated family mansion, which served as a hideout for her criminal father. The house was like a living maze, but she knew every inch of it by heart, and loved it almost as much as she loved her father:
So, yeah, he's pretty much Jack Napier, only he happens to have the name Dent. So there's absolutely no Harvey or Two-Face in her background at all, which I wouldn't be bothered by so much except her name is Duela Dent, for god's sake. But eh, her fans are probably almost all Joker fans anyway, so I guess it makes more sense to up that aspect. Still, my interest is officially gone.
But since we've come this far, let's see how the rest of her origin pans out. So one day, while playing hide and seek with her father, Duela hides up in the attic, where she is attacked by a cloud of bats who get into her hair and tear her face into a Glasgow smile. All of which, I'm pretty sure, bats don't actually do. Maybe they're crazy evil Joker bats or some bullshit, I dunno. Man, apparently I'm cranky today! And so:
Hey, look, a random cameo by Hugo Strange, who is... apparently a Klingon? Either way, the implication I'm getting here is that Hugo was hired by Jack Dent to drive his daughter crazy, and Jack himself put the finishing touches by dying her hair green, because it's the color of life and because the other girls would be green with envy. Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either, but then again, I'm not hopped up on Hugo's crazy-juice, so what do I know?
So Duela grows up hating bats but loving her father even more, until the sad, sad day when he and Jim Gordon pumped each other full of bullets. In this universe, Gordon is the one in the wheelchair, which is a genuinely interesting twist. And so, father and daughter share one last fateful moment together:
"Daddy's stomach is crying!" "Duela, you gotta do a special big girl job for Daddy. I need you to avenge my death." "I like bavenging!"
Wait, he left clues behind? So he's the Riddler too? Eh, well, he's dead anyway, so it's moot. And so, taking her father's dying words to heart, Duela remade herself (and somehow became porcelain-pale in the process? Okay, we'll just gloss over that detail), fashioning herself a costume that looks absolutely ridiculous in its big reveal:
Yeah, this is a strange, rare example of a costume looking better in action figure form and in cosplay than it does in comics. Yikes. Duela's reign of terror, by the way, features the only moment which is at least vaguely Two-Face-related:
So yeah, at least there's KIND of a Two-Face connection with her attacking both the law and crime, but it's in the name of chaos, which would be just like the Joker except it's not really funny chaos. So pretty much, I find absolutely nothing interesting about this character (other than her hate-crush on Batgirl, who may well be Gotham's sole protector in this universe, along with her cousin, Cass, who's Robin), which is a shame because Henchgirl and I really, really, REALLY loved the Ame-Comi Wonder Woman story, where Diana was a rather Barda-like asskicking warrior.
Tangent: But then, that storyline was drawn by Amanda Conner, who makes everything better. Everything. Amanda Conner's artwork instantly gives the characters more personality, and the storytelling is so much more fun. I cannot praise her enough for what she brings to a comic, and it's such a shame that she's wasting her talents on Before Watchmen. Well, I guess Amanda Conner gotta eat. /Tangent
If you'd like to read these comics for yourself, Batman: Earth One is available at finer bookstores and comic stores across the country, and can be purchased online (and for Kindle!) on Amazon. The Ame-Comi comics are first being released digitally, and then will be released in paper a month or two from now. The Duela Dent chapter I reviewed here can be purchased digitally, as can the second part, which just came out today.
The first is Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's Batman: Earth One, which I'd recently speculated might feature a Harvey Dent cameo at least. I still haven't read the book myself, but thanks to the help of martin_l_gore, I've at least gotten the low-down on the basic details, especially when it comes to the Harveys and the Dents. Yes, that was indeed a pair of plurals, as in addition to a surprising new take on Harvey Bullock, there are two Dents in B:EO.
Did I mention ***SPOILERS*** already?
Okay, good.
So as you may recall from my previous Batman: Earth One post, there was a preview page showing angst-ridden young Bruce talking with this universe's grizzled, ex-military, Sam Elliot style Alfred Pennyworth, and the last line on the page seemed to give one great big hint as to the speaker's identity:
So yeah, from that line, we're naturally meant to assume that it's Harvey speaking to Bruce. I mean, sure, it's a pretty cliched line right out of the Jeph Loeb school of writing Harvey Dent, but I wouldn't have put it past Johns to go there himself. Well, to Johns' credit, it was a purposeful misdirection, since the person speaking that line isn't Harvey at all. But she is a Dent:
Is anyone else getting a serious Rachel Dawes vibe off of this character? Not surprising, since Christopher Nolan and David Goyer were originally thinking of using of using Harvey in Batman Begins, but they ended up modifying his role into Rachel's. I don't know if Johns knew that when he wrote this scene and created this character, but if so, then what he's doing here is an interesting twist/mix of both ideas:
... Cute.
To quote Darth Vader, "... SIS-terrrr. So you have a twin sister." You don't find out that they're twins until later, but I couldn't resist busting out that line. But let's put that aside for the moment. Right now, I'm more distracted by the fact that he's being depicted as a complete asshole, kind of akin to Draco Malfoy by way of Flash Thompson who also kind of looks like Guy Gardner when he's getting Bat-punched. As you might imagine, I'm not crazy (hurr) about these pages.
From what I can see, the purposes served by this scene are to convey some history about Bruce's family (his mother's side are Arkhams here rather than Kanes, which kind of strikes me as needless consolidation of the mythos), coupled with the introduction of Harvey's original-character sister and a cute "ha-ha, look, it's the guy who's going to become Two-Face looking like Two-Face when he got punched for being a little shit!" moment. It's hardly the most flattering take on the character, and not exactly an encouraging indication of what he'll be like as an adult.
Unfortunately, we'll have to wait for the next volume to see how that plays out, but Johns gives us one more hint at the end, after the "ousting" of the corrupt Mayor Oswald Cobblepot (details withheld for the sake of those who still want to read this thing):
So, who wants to bet that she's going to get killed and it'll cause Harvey to go insane? Maybe Johns will be more creative than that and instead do it the other way around and make her Two-Face! I'd love to see that, especially since I'm not looking forward to seeing what kind of dickhole Harvey's grown into. Besides, it wouldn't be the first time that Gary Frank has drawn a female Two-Face:
Heck, she even has the scarring on the same wrong side as Harvey's punched-face! Maybe it's a theme or something. Yeah, I didn't think so, either.
As for Batman: Earth One as a whole, everything I've seen about the book makes it looks like a perfectly fine B-grade story that is perfectly serviceable even though it doesn't acquit its existence as being yet another goddamn Batman origin. By far, the most interesting aspect appears to be the subplot of Jim Gordon, who is a compromised/corrupt cop here, and a very different take on Harvey Bullock, much of whose SPOILER-filled storyline was posted here by martin_l_gore. Thanks again, Martin! Because of these scans, I will definitely be picking up a copy of this at some point! When I saw the Bullock stuff, my first thought was "DO NOT WANT," but I think Johns made it work by the end. We'll see where his story goes in volume two.
The other big appearance is only an extremely technical and distant connection to any Harvey we know, but I think you'll understand why she merits at least a mention:
So DC's been doing weekly digital comics based on the Ame-Comi line of figurines, which reimagined female heroes and villains with anime-style designs. One of the released figures was Duela Dent, who--as you can see--was a steampunk take on a female Joker with a Heath Ledger Glasgow smile. Unsurprisingly, a small fandom started to emerge around her via fan art and cosplay, and it only seems to be catching on more with each passing convention season.
Now, the Ame-Comi version of Duela has gotten her own origin in the pages of Ame-Comi Girls, written by the Jonah Hex team of Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, and drawn by Courtney Crumrin creator Ted Naifeh, so naturally, I was curious to see what they would do with the character's murky family lineage. Would she be Two-Face's daughter? The Joker's? The Jokester and Three-Face's ala Countdown, god help us?
The story begins with a flashback to little Duela growing up in her old dilapidated family mansion, which served as a hideout for her criminal father. The house was like a living maze, but she knew every inch of it by heart, and loved it almost as much as she loved her father:
So, yeah, he's pretty much Jack Napier, only he happens to have the name Dent. So there's absolutely no Harvey or Two-Face in her background at all, which I wouldn't be bothered by so much except her name is Duela Dent, for god's sake. But eh, her fans are probably almost all Joker fans anyway, so I guess it makes more sense to up that aspect. Still, my interest is officially gone.
But since we've come this far, let's see how the rest of her origin pans out. So one day, while playing hide and seek with her father, Duela hides up in the attic, where she is attacked by a cloud of bats who get into her hair and tear her face into a Glasgow smile. All of which, I'm pretty sure, bats don't actually do. Maybe they're crazy evil Joker bats or some bullshit, I dunno. Man, apparently I'm cranky today! And so:
Hey, look, a random cameo by Hugo Strange, who is... apparently a Klingon? Either way, the implication I'm getting here is that Hugo was hired by Jack Dent to drive his daughter crazy, and Jack himself put the finishing touches by dying her hair green, because it's the color of life and because the other girls would be green with envy. Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either, but then again, I'm not hopped up on Hugo's crazy-juice, so what do I know?
So Duela grows up hating bats but loving her father even more, until the sad, sad day when he and Jim Gordon pumped each other full of bullets. In this universe, Gordon is the one in the wheelchair, which is a genuinely interesting twist. And so, father and daughter share one last fateful moment together:
"Daddy's stomach is crying!" "Duela, you gotta do a special big girl job for Daddy. I need you to avenge my death." "I like bavenging!"
Wait, he left clues behind? So he's the Riddler too? Eh, well, he's dead anyway, so it's moot. And so, taking her father's dying words to heart, Duela remade herself (and somehow became porcelain-pale in the process? Okay, we'll just gloss over that detail), fashioning herself a costume that looks absolutely ridiculous in its big reveal:
Yeah, this is a strange, rare example of a costume looking better in action figure form and in cosplay than it does in comics. Yikes. Duela's reign of terror, by the way, features the only moment which is at least vaguely Two-Face-related:
So yeah, at least there's KIND of a Two-Face connection with her attacking both the law and crime, but it's in the name of chaos, which would be just like the Joker except it's not really funny chaos. So pretty much, I find absolutely nothing interesting about this character (other than her hate-crush on Batgirl, who may well be Gotham's sole protector in this universe, along with her cousin, Cass, who's Robin), which is a shame because Henchgirl and I really, really, REALLY loved the Ame-Comi Wonder Woman story, where Diana was a rather Barda-like asskicking warrior.
Tangent: But then, that storyline was drawn by Amanda Conner, who makes everything better. Everything. Amanda Conner's artwork instantly gives the characters more personality, and the storytelling is so much more fun. I cannot praise her enough for what she brings to a comic, and it's such a shame that she's wasting her talents on Before Watchmen. Well, I guess Amanda Conner gotta eat. /Tangent
If you'd like to read these comics for yourself, Batman: Earth One is available at finer bookstores and comic stores across the country, and can be purchased online (and for Kindle!) on Amazon. The Ame-Comi comics are first being released digitally, and then will be released in paper a month or two from now. The Duela Dent chapter I reviewed here can be purchased digitally, as can the second part, which just came out today.